"When we moved to charge the city, twenty of Baron Grojo's soldiers blocked our approach. The lord quickly gave the order to hold, having spotted the emblem they wore on their hand—the marquis's—and the baron went to speak with them. They said the marquis's second son was staying in the village for a week before he was due to leave and that we would have to wait before laying siege."
"What kind of nonsense is that?! What right does this son of the Marquis think he has to act this way?!" Licerio snarled, consumed by fury.
Marlleo stayed quiet through Licerio's outburst and waited for him to settle before continuing.
"The lord always placed great value on his word and on promises, and he trusted them," he sighed, helpless. "Two weeks later they were still there, and the baron held his patience; another week passed, and we watched a blue and gold carriage bearing the marquis's emblem leave the village. We prepared ourselves and moved to attack—but who could have expected that those three weeks they made us wait were to give one of the Marquis's theurges time to arrive."
Licerio squeezed his hands, and the rage flooded back through his body like something that could not be contained. He could not believe the Marquis of Chrysalis would play things this way. His son appeared to have no regard for his name, using it and his word to stall his father while throwing his weight behind Baron Grojo.
To think the Marquis had no hand in this was impossible. Moving a theurge is as consequential as moving an army.
"How could the Marquis move one of his theurges for this? What would he even gain?" Licerio murmured.
He was deeply curious about what could possibly exist in their territory that would make even the Marquis agree to support Baron Grojo in this war.
The horses had rested, and they set off again, riding without another stop until they reached the camp of their lord's army.
At nightfall, they arrived at the camp's edge.
The sight was grim—his eyes could not settle anywhere for long. Wounded men everywhere, lying on the ground with nothing but cloth between them and the dirt, crying out or muttering in agony, trying anything to ease the pain. With every breath, a metallic smell hit Licerio's nose, making his head swim and sending waves of nausea through him that he barely held back.
Some wounded bore deep, very clean cuts across their bodies; others had limbs severed with an impossibly smooth edge.
But he had to focus on other things now and forced himself away from the wounded. After finding the company captains, he requested their reports on troop numbers and asked them to gather in his tent in half an hour.
He went to the largest tent, the command tent, and sat down before a table covered in papers and topographic maps. At that moment he had taken full command of the army, and he felt something growing in his body—a tingling that moved through him from the inside.
It was a force welling up within him, a force transmitted by his current vassals through the talent bound to his very being. A force he had felt as a child, without ever achieving any real results, since no one had ever truly felt and accepted him as their lord.
With an entire army under his command, that connection had become a significant advantage, with all his bonds to his vassals like tangible threads feeding him a considerable physical enhancement—though nothing worth mentioning before a theurge.
He had tried to experiment with this strange power inside him without ever managing any concrete results. He had more speculation than answers.
As he lost himself in the maps before him and drifted through his memories, he found his mind wandering to older ones—memories of his childhood in this world. Not many in the house knew it; from a young age he had been known as a great prodigy, astonishing his father during lessons, drawing on the knowledge of his previous life.
To keep people from bothering him, he had asked his father to tell no one of his gifts, with only his tutor and a few people very close to his father knowing.
Among his abilities, he had shown remarkable command of mathematics and some interest in the art of war. He was no great master of it, but it had been required learning during his education as a noble, and he had ended up being quite outstanding in it.
Those were mere facts in theory, and he did not know if he would be able to put them to use in actual combat. He had to arm himself with courage and move forward one step at a time.
Time passed and the reports came in; they were grim enough that a troubled expression had settled on Licerio's face.
The army his father had raised initially numbered one hundred and fifty-two men: three knights, eight mounted squires, fifteen archers, twenty mercenary crossbowmen, and one hundred and six infantry lancers.
This formation spoke to the great wealth of his father's domain, but more than fifteen soldiers had died and over twenty were wounded—six of them critically.
The weight of those final words pressed down on Licerio, a dull ache at the deaths of the farmers and villagers from his territory—but this was not the moment to make room for his feelings; he had to think of the common good.
Baron Grojo could not have had a large force, given that his domain had only recently been granted to him, leaving him with a weaker economy and fewer trained troops, but before a theurge, every advantage crumbled.
Baron Grojo's initial army consisted of one knight, two mounted squires, twenty archers, and seventy-four lancers—a respectable force for a newly titled baron.
From the reports on the table, his father's army had killed both squires, nine archers, and over twenty lancers, gutting the enemy force entirely. Licerio's side had lost one squire and fourteen lancers in return.
The night moved too fast. Licerio and his knights had stayed up the whole night trying to build a plan to deal with the enemy theurge; at least they knew he was an elemental practitioner, bound to the law of wind.
Nor could they kill him even if they managed to capture him or cut him down in the middle of battle; they could not withstand the Marquis of Chrysalis's wrath.
The most complex part of the plan was the theurge's safety itself; they were unable to wound him badly, let alone kill him. A theurge was a great prize for any noble, and they could not endure the Marquis of Chrysalis's fury if he learned they had killed one of his.
Everything seemed to be working against Licerio and his knights as they pored over the maps with only a few hours left before the next engagement.
The reports indicated that the theurge could launch blades of wind capable of inflicting severe cuts and could also use updrafts to raise dust and blind the enemy army.
What remained unknown was his third technique, since an apprentice of tricks could only use three.
To capture the theurge, they settled on forming a squad—one knight, three squires, and five lancers—who would carry the heaviest shields available to protect against the wind blades and be tasked with distracting and capturing him.
The rest would charge hard into the enemy, creating a chaotic melee so the theurge could not pick off anyone else if he slipped away from the squad.
One of the greatest problems with this plan was the uncertainty around the theurge's third technique. It was a dangerous variable they would have to face, and they hoped their preparation would carry them through. The worst case was the one a company captain had raised: that the theurge had an escape ability. If he spent the whole battle running and planted himself firmly behind his lines, the battle would end in defeat; to win, the theurge had to fall.
He organized his soldiers, and they marched to the field, moving to the position they had chosen to intercept the enemy advance—a place with sparse grass and relatively damp ground, with little loose dirt.
Licerio led the army at the front, with Marlleo at his side, always ready to offer his knowledge and occasional counsel. There had been some pushback from Marlleo and Astor about him leading from the front, given that this was his first battle. They feared he would end up wounded in a possible ambush, which would destroy what remained of the army's morale entirely.